When Max says "I saw a movie once, where a person saw an owl, and it meant they were being abducted by aliens" they are referencing the book and film "Communion" written by an abductee Whitley Streiber and starring Christopher Walken. In his description of the owl, it was later to be found out through hypnosis that extraterrestrials usually replace our subconscious images of them into an animal which usually is an owl, or deer.